There are no sacred cows in sports doping scandals

When big fish are caught in modern sport's anti-doping net, there is cause for comfort. It confirms the anti-doping business is serious. When these big fish are then treated without fear or favour, there's cause for quiet celebration. It's not personal, but it states that sport is serious.

To mix the metaphors, there can be no sacred cows in the integrity business.

This is a battle that has to be fought with equally applied rigour regardless of athlete, nationality, or sporting discipline. It isn't the battle of any one sport, it's the battle for all sport. For the whole thing, as we've known and loved it, is these days under threat.

The Maria Sharapova case has prompted some public theorising that the professional sporting model is stuffed. This is a fear that has lurked, largely unspoken and as a slow-creeping realisation, for some years.

Rather than it being a crazy, alarmist view, it has a compelling logic. Generally in the commercial marketplace, when a critical mass of people begin to doubt a product's credibility the public will stop buying it.

We probably shouldn't be surprised that professional sport seems inclined to breed cheating; not that such fiddling necessarily started over money. When Thomas Hicks won the 1904 Olympic Games marathon, handlers gave him doses of strychnine in raw egg-white during the second half of the race. Apart from being highly toxic, strychnine was then considered a useful stimulant. Whether or not the athlete knew what he was ingesting, today he would be disqualified.

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Regardless of toxicity, though, Hicks survived and was second across the line at St Louis.

First to finish was Fred Lorz, a New Yorker who was later found to have used another powerful performance enhancer - a motor vehicle - for almost half the race's distance. Lorz was subsequently hit with a life ban, but it seems the claim that his use of mechanisation was a practical joke eventually won the day. He was allowed to return to the sport and won the 1905 Boston Marathon.

While these early incidents may have opened windows of possibility in some minds, it's doubtful they sparked the epidemic we've come to know. The driver of modern-day cheating was the Cold War, when the communist countries of Eastern Europe were seeking to outstrip the United States in the Olympic arena for propaganda purposes. In those years there was no World Anti-Doping Agency and no drug testing, so it was open slather.

Then came big money and the rest is history. Except it isn't confined to the past. It's in the present and it will certainly continue as a major issue into the future. The sports industry keeps growing and, as long as it does, its potential to generate money will continue unabated. So there will be more cheats. And they will continue to undermine the very industry that has given them their shot at fame and fortune.

Obviously there is little thought of this from those who wilfully cheat or flirt with breaching the rules. Either that or they simply don't care. Each one who has cheated, or trodden close enough to the edge to trip over it, has contributed to the precarious state in which sport finds itself.

So when for an act below the level of deliberate cheating an athlete is delivered an apparently harsh penalty, don't blame WADA. Or a sport's administration. Or people who express a strong anti-doping stance. If you want to blame someone, direct your wrath at those who cheated in the past, whose actions were responsible for the establishment of sport's strict anti-doping regime. And blame those who lied, or whose failure to take the code seriously enough created such a grey zone between guilt and innocence.

The Sharapova case, by its nature, is timely as a point of comparison with the closer-to-home Essendon affair.

As with the Bombers players, there are claims the statuesque Russian superstar was guilty of nothing worse than carelessness. If that is so, a two-year suspension seems a big price to pay. After all, her earlier use of a substance that had not been banned involved no breach of the rules. For all anyone knew before 18 months ago, athletes may have been free to use meldonium indefinitely.

Also like the Bombers within their sport, Sharapova is a highly significant figure in hers. She is a champion and she is eye-catching. An enforced absence would have deleterious consequences for women's tennis in particular.

But also like the Bombers, Sharapova must cop her whack. She knew her responsibility and, for whatever reason, she failed. In this case an admission to the use of a banned substance has been made. Claims of innocent motivation for a breach, unless they can be substantiated, cannot be taken seriously. Otherwise every cheat would have an escape route.

While, for her shrieking and obsessive manner, Sharapova isn't everyone's cup of tea, she is an instantly recognisable global figure. As big fish go, this is a monster. For the athlete and her sport, the outcome is a disaster.